A Quiet Calm (An Ode to My Kid)

I’m still clinging on to sort of okay by the skin of my teeth. I’ve also been fortunate that, for once, the kiddo has been helping a lot.

You see, my daughter is three. She’s a great kid in the scheme of things — silly, fiercely independent, appreciative of high culture (better known as ‘Things me and the husband like’). All in all, we like her quite a bit, and feel fortunate in that. Oh, it also comes with a heavy dose of screaming and flailing and frustration that comes with not having a full grasp on the English language, but the good tends to outweigh the bad.

Now, I’m the first to admit that of myself and my husband, my husband is totally the mom. He changes diapers (I can’t get near poop without having a near panic attack. Yeah, didn’t think this through very well), tends to meals, and just all in all is a well of patience. I tend to do the flinging around and heavy tickling sort of things between trying to keep my headspace sane enough to not be horrible to live with. I feel no guilt or failures — our kiddo is getting lots of love and affection and her needs tended to.

But this also means that I tend to isolate a lot and leave them to it, even though I don’t necessarily mean to. My mother, bless her, is very much a person who is in her own bubble, and I don’t want to end up that bad. But self-preservation kicks in, and well. My ears hear the loud noises my kiddo makes and my heart starts racing and I dive into the bubble so I don’t have a breakdown. It’s a really hard balancing act — I want to pay attention to my child and give her lots of love, but I’ve got to take care of myself so I can pay attention to my child and all the nerve edges are so raw that all the spoons fly away and retreat, retreat, retreat.

But yesterday, she was in top form. She was very silly, she was picking fantastic movies, she was cheering people up left and right. Credit where credit is due — she was being one tiny badass. To her further credit, she’s got a pretty good grasp on empathy for her age; perhaps she picked up on how poorly the husband and I were doing and adjusted her behavior accordingly. She’s being pretty awesome today too, if only for declaring it a Star Wars day. We’ll never argue with having a Star Wars day. *grins*

And of course, I have to give her the biggest credit of all — if she hadn’t been born, I’m not sure I would have ever found the strength to try to get diagnosed and treated. It’s often said that our children make better people of us, but that… that one takes the cake. I certainly hope that the bipolar spares her, though I do have to admit that it’s a non-consideration to me as to whether or not I had children, or have any more (though the thought of having another doesn’t particularly appeal — odds are the next one would be a total shit *grins*). At least with me knowing and accepting my mental health state, I’m doing us all a favor — if she is so afflicted, at least she won’t make it to her 30s with no idea of it.

Anyways, I guess that’s about it for now. Hopefully I can keep holding up and not slip into depression. But for now, I’m going to go give my little one a big hug and a kiss, just ’cause.